Bisera Dakova

Yavorov’s experiment to be not himself, to enter the zone of fiction, is a performative act: what we see on the road, on the move, crossing Sofia, coincides with the entry into and exit from the narrative (from the prose). In this compendium text, Yavorov, adopting a role uncharacteristic of him, continually refers to recognizable or hidden gestures of famous writers, demonstrating an ostentatious familiarity in handling them. There is an empathy with Luben-Caravelov’s “physiological sketch”, reminiscences from Aleko’s feuilletons, ironically snide remarks to P. P. Slaveykov, mockery at the poetry of Trifon Kunev. The narrative’s travelogue, the selected Sofia topoi are frankly reminiscent of Vazov’s cycle of stories “Kardashev on the Hunt”. Yavorov’s text abounds with quotations – from the mocking-parody of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and the Gospel to the profane-volgarized belitrization of his own lyrical motifs, i.e. to the seemingly muted self-reference to already published.

На 20 юни 2022 г. в Института за славистика, Университет Виена, се състоя Кръгла маса „Теодор Траянов всред българския символизъм / Teodor Trajanov inmitten des bulgarischen Symbolismus“. В този малък форум, проведен на границата между пандемията и „нормалното време“, се включиха видни изследователи на модернизма в българската литература: Михаил Неделчев, Иван Младенов, Елка Димитрова, Пламен Антов, Борис Минков, забележителният познавач на живота и творчеството на Теодор Траянов от периода Млада Виена Младен Влашки, както и изследователи с по-различен профил и научни интереси като Мариета Иванова-Гиргинова, Елка Трайкова, Александра Антонова, Мария Огойска, Вера Радева.

Looking into the work of T. Trayanov it turns out that most of his emblematic titles appeared much later, only in the 1920s. If we exclude the vivid ornamental titles of the early twentieth century (“The Drop of Desire”, “Melancholy of the Petrified”), as well as the few surviving titles from then (“Sunflower”, “New Day”), the poet’s later titles were not spontaneously placed as the texts appeared, but were formulaic quintessences, used over a long period of time and applied with a particular aesthetic tendency in mind. Thus, Trayanov’s titles mark the changes in his poetics: there are either a small number of persistent titles, reimagined from a radically new context; or the proliferation of spring titles, a product of the ideological format of optimistic upbeat Bulgarian symbolism imposed in the early 1920s. These include titles associated with pagan-ritual origins (“Pyre”, “White Altar”, “Altar Flowers”), also titles produced by self-stylization in the spirit of German Romanticism such as “Blue Flower”, “Violet”, “Daffodils”, as well as all titles that emerged as a consequence of contextual links, correlations and affirmations in the magazine Hyperion.